Relatore: Dott.ssa Anna Malandrino
Discussant: Dr. James Dennison, Migration Policy Centre – EUI and University of Stockholm
Titolo: “Cultural diversity and language minorities in the Italian government’s online communication”
The subject of this seminar concerns the presence of cultural diversity and language minorities in online communication by governmental exponents as a proxy of readiness for the introduction of culturally pluralistic policies into the agenda.
According to many theoretical and empirical studies, intercultural dialogue and respectful integration of the cultural heritage of minorities are beneficial not only for the minorities themselves, but also for the society that hosts them. The Italian context is highly multicultural: this is due on the one hand to the presence of local languages, dialectal varieties and historical minority languages (L. 482/1999), and on the other hand to incoming migration phenomena. In the face of the legal protection of historical minorities only, it remains to be understood how the promotion and integration of linguistic minorities are articulated in the communication of political figures on the national scene. The research presented in this seminar aims to investigate this issue through an analysis of textual data collected on Twitter on the treatment of the promotion and cultural integration of minorities by politicians in the administrations between 2008 and 2020, in order to understand which and how solid are the foundations for the development of policies oriented towards cultural pluralism or assimilation.